True crime is big business, and it is everywhere. Podcasts chronicling real-life murder cases top the charts, while TV documentaries often go viral, opening a person’s most devastating moments up to the world for our entertainment. It is this macabre fact which writer and viral sensation, Izzy Radford, skewers so superbly in her new work Big Dog.
Set in a dazzlingly pink office, Big Dog centres on the production team of Cassie Does Crime, a viral true crime sensation that has made its fortune by entertaining its audience with stories about violent and shocking crimes. The office is managed by ‘Big Boss’ Yasmin (Lauryn Jenkins), an unnervingly smiling figure whose demands on behalf of the never-seen viral star Cassie put workers Scarlett (Radford) and new hire Eve (Tumba Katanda) under pressure to generate viral content and ‘sex up continuously’ the murder stories. What follows over an hour is a sharply written comedy aimed at exposing the human cost of such documentaries, where the desensitised public and content generators miss the impact such works have upon the victims’ families.
While there are plenty of one-liners and deliberate punchlines, much of the humour comes from the play’s absurdity too. Radford, a viral TikTok star in her own right, is well aware of social media’s sinister side, and this comes out in full force through her writing of this intelligent comedy. Yasmin’s insistence that the women take part in a self-defence class is performative and disingenuous, while her sudden and extreme nose job satirises the quest for perfection online. Radford deliberately skewers the individuals who work for Cassie, but does well not to go overboard here, deriding them as concepts rather than as characters, and instead leaving the absent Cassie as the real problematic figurehead.
Despite its brevity, the production is mature in its development, wasting no time in setting up each character while also deftly teasing ulterior motives and subplots. This makes the office environment far more unsettling and chilling than at first, perfectly-pink, glance.
Eve, whose background in real investigative journalism puts her at odds with Cassie’s content, is neatly portrayed by Katanda. Initially sceptical of the process and frustrated by Cassie’s pedantic feedback and disinterest in facts, Eve is gradually drawn into the virality of the content creation world. There are glimmers, subtly woven into the piece under Zoë Templeman-Young’s direction, that Eve is not simply here to earn a living, but this is allowed to organically grow in a comedy which the audience begins to piece together much like one of Cassie’s podcasts.
As the delightfully dim Scarlett, Radford is on fine comedic form as Cassie’s loyal fan turned employee, who urgently and relentlessly defends Cassie’s content from both Eve’s questions and the baying crowd of online commentators critical of Cassie’s work. Radford is great fun as Scarlett, with deftly delivered one-liners and physical comedy combining to terrific effect. One particular highlight during a fierce showdown is Scarlett’s deliberate and oblivious attempt at prayer, an absurd moment that brilliantly captures the madness of the comedy.
As Yasmin, Jenkins’s outwardly relentless, positive, and proactive portrayal of the office manager whose priority is monetisation is superbly formed. Jenkins’s delivery of Yasmin is unsettling and captivating. You are never quite sure what Yasmin might do next, with her disarmingly unnerving first interaction with Eve immediately establishing Yasmin as suspicious and conniving. Later on, Radford’s writing enables Yasmin to breathe a little, and we see the real woman isolated in a world which requires connectivity, a neat touch that looks not just at the toll on those the podcasts focus on, but on those who create them too.
That said, Radford’s writing remains clear and sharply focused on casting a critical eye on society’s indulgence in true crime. The appearance of Eleanor Cross’s Eliza, a friend of a murdered woman whom Cassie podcasts about, catalyses the final, frantic 15 minutes, which with terrific sophistication combines comedy and drama in a manner building to a thrilling finale.
Big Dog is an impressive, extremely well-crafted, and sharply focused new comedy which excels both in entertaining and in delivering its message in equal measure. It is with great irony, perhaps, that just like the content it is critical of, this triumphant show looks set to go viral too.
